The American Pundit

Bob Owens found a some-what concerned feeling in an Associated Press article about soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan not fragging their commanders.

RALEIGH, N.C. — American troops killed their own commanders so often during the Vietnam War that the crime earned its own name – “fragging.”

But since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has charged only one soldier with killing his commanding officer, a dramatic turnabout that most experts attribute to the all-volunteer military.

And some argue the case of Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez shouldn’t even be considered fragging, since his motive was unclear.

Fragging – derived from the hard-to-trace weapon of choice in such attacks, the fragmentation grenade – has varying definitions, from the killing of any superior to the murder of a soldier’s direct commander to avoid combat…

Between 1969 and 1971, the Army reported 600 fragging incidents that killed 82 Americans and injured 651. In 1971 alone, there were 1.8 fraggings for every 1,000 American soldiers serving in Vietnam, not including gun and knife assaults.

“These people knew the war was pretty much lost, that they were going to be sacrificed,” said Texas A&M University history professor and Vietnam veteran Terry Anderson. “They just wanted to get out of Vietnam.”…

The only other member of the military charged with murdering a superior since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began is Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar of the 101st Airborne Division. Akbar was sentenced to death for a 2003 grenade-and-rifle attack at a base in Kuwait prior to his unit’s move into in Iraq.

But while Akbar’s victims included those of a higher rank, they were not his direct commanding officers. Prosecutors said he launched the attack because he was concerned about U.S. troops killing fellow Muslims in the Iraq war. Akbar’s attorneys argued he was too mentally ill to have planned the attack.

The article goes on. Why does the Associated Press sound so concerned that people who volunteered to join the Army aren’t killing their commanders? Don Surber writes:

Yes, imagine that: People who are forced to be in the military resent the hell out of the military. Perhaps this is why so many lefties support the draft. They hate the military and want to recruit more military-bashers.

After a slow start, the all-volunteer Army has been a huge success. As witnessed by the end of fragging.

Yes, imagine that.